This is the home of Pyram King, writer, tabletop RPG designer, and traveler. Exploring how history, place, and lived experience shape game design.
Here you’ll find essays, design notes, and long-form reflections centered on:
- Legends of Barovia — a gothic expansion and reinterpretation of Curse of Strahd
- Legends of Saltmarsh — a grounded reimagining of Ghosts of Saltmarsh in the World of Greyhawk
- Iron & Myth — a gritty, human-centric TTRPG inspired by medieval Europe
(working title: Medieval 5e) - Game theory, referee craft, and mechanical design
- How real history, travel, and landscape inform myth, play, and storytelling
This site serves as a workshop, journal, and archive, a place where rules, rulings, history, and experience intersect.
About the Work
I’m the author of Legends of Barovia, a widely downloaded expansion of Curse of Strahd, and Legends of Saltmarsh, an expanded take on Ghosts of Saltmarsh set in the World of Greyhawk. Both projects weave lore, politics, factions, and adventure design into living settings where atmosphere, consequence, and player agency matter. The goal is to create worlds that respond to player choices, not static backdrops.
All core content is released as free PDF guides and online references for the community. Supporting members help make that possible and, in return, gain access to additional formats including Digital Asset packs, Foundry Adventure Modules, LegendKeeper and Markdown files, and ongoing expansions. If you find the work useful at your table, consider becoming a member to support its continued development.
My current long-term project is Iron & Myth (working title: Medieval 5e)—a low-fantasy tabletop roleplaying game built around a grounded, gritty medieval world while retaining familiar d20 mechanics. The system draws directly from medieval history, folklore, and fortification design, particularly 11th–14th century Portugal and Spain, and from decades of running games where survival, context, and hard choices matter more than power curves or character builds.
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About Me
I began playing tabletop RPGs in 1982 with Moldvay B/X and Traveller, cutting my teeth on classic TSR modules set in Greyhawk, Ravenloft, and stranger corners still. Those early games were steeped in the spirit of 1980s cinema and literature—Conan, Excalibur, Blade Runner, Alien, The Empire Strikes Back, The Name of the Rose—alongside the works of Michael Moorcock, Fritz Leiber, Joe Haldeman, and Isaac Asimov.
The characters weren’t chosen heroes. They were survivors. You didn’t play demigods; you played desperate, capable people navigating hostile worlds with wit, grit, and long odds. That philosophy continues to shape my design work today.
In 2020, I began publishing adventures and campaign material for D&D and system-agnostic play, eventually producing over forty adventures for Foundry VTT. Alongside this, I write about referee craft, game structure, and the ways historical reality can deepen and enrich role-playing games.
I am also a novelist. My first book, Destiny’s War, is a historical novel set in the First World War in the Middle East. I am currently working on its sequel, as well as a second historical novel set in Iberia during the 12th and 13th centuries.
Born to foreign-exchange teachers, I became a traveler early in life. My experiences have taken me across Southeast Asia, aboard the Trans-Siberian Railway during the late Cold War, through Central American unrest, to Pacific volcanic islands, up the slopes of Kilimanjaro, and into service in the Persian Gulf. These journeys—combined with the literary influence of writers such as Richard Burton, T.E. Lawrence, Ernest Hemingway, and Hermann Hesse—continue to inform my work with a strong sense of place, uncertainty, and survival.